Also from Wired, the Supreme Court agrees to review a Ninth Circuit decision on privacy rights in the context of background checks on government workers.

The FCC announces that it will recommend the sale of 500 megahertz of spectrum to meet the needs of mobile broadband users, from the Washington Post.

Programmers in trouble over financial misdeeds: two programmers who developed code for Madoff are charged with fraud (The New York Times, The Register) and the Securities Exchange Commission files a complaint against a one-man Russian investment company for hacking into online portfolios to “pump and dump” stocks (Switched, Wired).

Spicy IP reports that Brazil seems set to invoke WTO intellectual property cross-retaliation provisions for the first time, against the US.

The European Parliament threatens to bring a legal challenge against the European Commission if it fails to disclose details of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), writes Outlaw (see our post on the controversial treaty here).

Also from Outlaw: Net Neutrality in the UK: Ofcom to probe broadband providers’ management of web traffic.